


Gone Astray (A Scooby Interlude)

by marieadriana



Series: ARROW, Inc. [10]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Gen, Team Bonding, Team as Family, Trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 10:58:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14872487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marieadriana/pseuds/marieadriana
Summary: Phil Coulson's hand-picked, elite 'Scooby Squad' follows up on a lead regarding the assault on their squad leader... breaking a whole lot of regulations in the process. (Takes place during Chapter 34 of Best Laid Plans, February 2012.)





	Gone Astray (A Scooby Interlude)

**Author's Note:**

> This is what amounts to a featurette between ‘Best Laid Plans’ and ‘Unraveling.’ It will have mentions of canon characters, and a brief appearance by Maria Hill, but is almost entirely original characters – specifically, the Scooby Squad. If you are not into OCs, you can skip this fic without missing critical plot points.
> 
> But if you do read it, you’ll get to learn why Al’s nickname is Alley Cat (and who called him that first) and see CJ discover the best anti-panic technique he’s ever tried – and some other gems that are sprinkled in there, just for my Scooby fans.

It started out harmlessly enough. Don’t all really bad ideas start out that way?

Raj had been excited about his latest lead – and Chuck didn’t really understand why it was exciting, just that their chemist-medic-science-minded clanmate thought he had a lead on the chemical mixture that had been used to dose Misty – that new and unfamiliar drug that had rendered her memoryless for forty-eight hours, though they had no idea if she’d been unconscious or not.

Chuck tried not to think about that – the idea that Misty might have been awake and aware, given something to erase her memory but leave her conscious in the present of whatever horror she’d endured… no. That was not a thought he wanted to dwell on. He was still making his peace with this weird balance between supervisor and soul-sister – his mama’s suggestion as to what to call Misty – but he knew he didn’t want to think of her in pain, no matter what he called her.

Raj being excited about a lead was good – because there hadn’t been much to get excited about, in that investigation. Lance had been working himself – and his squadmates – hard, trying to infer and deduce and posit… and hadn’t gotten very far. It was incredibly frustrating, because this shouldn’t have been the kind of crime that went unsolved, in Lance’s opinion – but that drug changed the rules.

That drug meant that Misty had reportedly already showered by the time she arrived in Wisconsin – it prevented them from getting physical evidence from her person and, since she had traveled while in her drugged state, prevented them from getting physical evidence from a location. It was two days before Lance had even identified the motel she’d left from… and there was no telling how much of her missing time had been spent there. The room had been too clean – he was operating under the assumption that the perpetrator had spent enough time in the room to warrant cleaning it – and it hadn’t resulted in any evidence.

“Hey.” Chuck knocked his knuckles lightly against Lance’s temple. “Quit glaring at the computer. It didn’t do nothing to you.”

Lance rubbed his eyes and shifted his glared to the squad second. He wasn’t sure which irritated him more – the bad grammar, or the knuckle tap. “It sure as hell isn’t doing anything to help me, either.”

“Come on.” Chuck gestured towards the door. “I need beer and a burger, and we’ve been off-the-clock for hours now.” It was nearing eight in the evening – even the triad had already left SHIELD HQ.

“Yeah, okay.” Lance didn’t feel like socializing tonight, and he knew Chuck was going to insist on one of his preferred ‘taverns,’ but he didn’t feel like an argument about it, either. He rubbed his eyes one more time, squeezing them together tightly and transferring his hands to his temples, drilling the fingertips into them like he could spear the headache on one and flick it away.

Angie appeared – how did she do that? Lance wondered idly – in the doorway and tossed a tea sachet at Lance. He caught it reflexively, unsurprised to see it was Catriona’s headache remedy. “Put that in hot water while I round up the strays,” Angie ordered him. Lance bit back a smile. It was rare to see Angie be commanding, and he didn’t want to discourage her – but it was damned adorable. 

Chuck’s eyes followed her form as she darted down the hallway to summon their clanmates – not difficult to determine which cubicles held them, considering there were damned few agents in the building. When the chattering clutch of agents returned, Raj was still talking about this mysterious lead of his – which had apparently evolved since last Chuck had tuned into Raj. Now it was a location… some address in an area of the District that Chuck wasn’t sure he’d have been willing to go to alone… he sure as hell wasn’t sending a clanmate down there – not when his normally capable agent had gone absent-minded professor on this drug research.

“Why’nt we swing by there before we hit Bingo’s Burgers?” Chuck suggested, slinging a companionable arm around Raj’s shoulder to guide him out the door and into the garage. “Real quick like – take a look around, see if it’s anything worth letting Chief know about.”

Raj agreed immediately, and gave Chuck the address. As their squad second typed it into the GPS, CJ leaned over to Angie. “We’re not even going to tell Chief we’re going?”

“You did hear how flimsy this lead is, right?” Angie whispered back. “This isn’t investigating, this is humoring an excitable colleague.”

They rode in two vehicles – Chuck’s SUV and Sam’s smaller sedan – and pulled up by the curb of a dilapidated, boarded-up facility that might have been a warehouse in another decade. Raj climbed out of the car looking eager and took off towards a gap in the chain-link fence.

“Christ, Raj, don’t do shit like that,” Chuck hissed at him, grabbing Raj’s elbow. “At least pretend to be a field agent.”

“I am a field agent,” Raj retorted.

Lance, bringing up the rear, muttered to CJ, “He doesn’t act like it.” Angie muffled a snort.

Al patted their medic on the shoulder. “Not the kick-in-the-doors, mow-down-the-enemy type they are,” he said, jerking his thumb at Chuck, Sam, and CJ – adding Lance into that after a moment, though not Angie. “We are a different breed of agent, I fear.” As it often did at the end of the day, Al’s accent had slipped away from the purposely bland American one he kept at work, to a more Mediterranean sound. It was subtle – a detail Lance wasn’t sure other SHIELD agents would catch, even if they had the opportunity to hear it.

He didn’t know if anyone outside the clan ever heard it.

Raj pushed through the gap in the chain-link fence with Al and Chuck close behind him. “It’s supposed to be underground – the entrance is supposed to be… yes! Right here.” He seized a metal door handle – set into the foundation of the crumbling building – and pulled.

Angie flinched, drawing her teammates’ attention. “What?” she said defensively when Chuck raised an eyebrow. “This is like the opening to a really bad horror movie, and I’m the ditsy girl who’s going to die in the first five minutes. I’m jumpy.”

“You’ll be fine,” Chuck said drily. “You’ve got the token black man,” he gestured towards himself with his thumb, “the ethnically Indian in the lead,” he jerked his hand at Raj, “and the racially indistinct but obviously not white Anglo-Saxon agent – who happens to be wearing a red shirt.” He pointed at Al, making a face. “Trust me, Ang. You’re safe from movie cliches tonight.”

Sam offered her a small smile. “Besides, maybe you’re the pretty love interest that’ll be last woman standing with the hero, and I’m the sassy bitch who gets overconfident and gutted in the second half.”

“You all watch too many damned movies,” Lance grumbled. CJ seconded that with a grunt as he automatically counted the party – still seven.

Seven was good, CJ thought. Eight would be better. Goddess, he wished Misty were here. Not just because that would mean he wasn’t walking into an underground facility on a Tuesday evening when he could be eating spaghetti at the dojo… no, he just missed her. She’d know what sarcastic comeback to use on Lance to get him to ease up – she’d know what to say to Angie to ease her fear. 

Raj had successfully opened the metal door leading to a dark, dank hallway that went… down. Chuck stared at the slanted hall before turning his gaze on their medic. “Where did you say you got this information?”

“A source,” Raj answered blithely, and brushed past him to enter the passageway. Chuck growled again, but followed.

Sam inched forward behind Chuck, one hand on her sidearm and the other trailing along the wall – tracking their path, Lance realized. He’d seen Natasha do the same thing in simulations, but he’d never seen either of them use it in the field. Interesting. Actually, observing all of his teammates this way was interesting – from his position at the rear of the group, he could see all six of them.

They reached a corridor, and the passageway seemed to have stopped sloping. Chuck glanced down both directions before shrugging at Raj, who chose the left turn. “God, why are we all following him like ducklings?” Angie muttered to CJ. She raised her voice. “This is so stupid. I’m hungry. Can we please just go to dinner? We have to be back at HQ in like nine hours, Raj.”

“Quit whining, you sound like a puppy,” Chuck said – but flashed her a wink over his shoulder to show he was teasing.

“A hungry damn puppy,” she retorted, but subsided.

“Did I tell you that Maria rescued a dog?” Chuck asked, glancing around. “Speaking of puppies. Talked to them this morning – apparently, Maria went into full on Agent mode and did a solo ice rescue of a floundering pregnant pup. The flower twins are keeping her, and they’ve named her Daisy.”

CJ wished he’d been there to see the look on Misty’s face when she’d realized Maria had risked her life for a damned dog – maybe that would finally be the right push? Although if Misty’s attack hadn’t been enough impetus… CJ sighed. He’d thought when he decided not to pursue any romantic relationships of his own that he’d be free from this drama… but apparently freeing himself of it just meant his heart would worry about the romantic happiness of his kin, instead.

“Too bad they couldn’t bring the dog home,” Sam was saying over her shoulder to Chuck as Raj tested the handle of a door. “Be nice to have a clan mascot.”

Raj pushed the door open and grinned. “Pay dirt.”

The seven of them filed into the room – cleaner than the hallway they’d traversed, lit with flickering fluorescent bulbs and possessing more beakers and Bunsen burners than Chuck had seen outside of a high school chem lab – or a SHIELD lab. “Well, hell, Raj. I guess I misjudged your source.”

The medic flashed him a smug grin as he strode into the room, reaching for a three-ring binder open on one of the metal counters.

“Wait!” Lance shouted, spying at the last moment a filament threaded from the binder to a device on the ceiling – but his warning was too late.

When the wall behind them exploded, it was a surprise – because one never really expects to be blown up – but as Chuck hit the ground, he felt incredibly dumb for not anticipating that the damned lab could be wired to blow.

~ * ~

Chuck couldn’t hear the second hand moving on his watch, but he could see it moving. Years of training and a well-honed survival instinct had meant that he’d grabbed his nearest teammate – Angie – and sheltered her body with his own, his hands drawn up to protect his face… putting his wrist damn near in front of his nose, when he came to. It meant he could gauge the extent of his hearing loss – temporary, he hoped, and relatively minor – and the amount of time he’d been unconscious. By his watch and memory, less than ten minutes. The dust hadn’t settled fully, yet.

Seeing dust meant there was light – not natural light, they were underground still, but at least one of the overhead lights was still on, and he could pick up a flashlight beam. “Report,” he croaked, and cleared his throat. “Sound off, Scoobies.” He shifted his arms around until he could jostle Angie awake. 

“Christ Jesus, when I make sure Raj is okay, I’m going to fucking kill him,” Lance announced. “Lancelot sounding off. My ears are ringing and I’m gonna have a bruise where my shoulder hit the ground, but I’m okay.”

“I am uninjured as well,” Al announced. He avoided his call name – Alley Cat – as he usually did in conversation.

Chuck waited. “Sam? Angie? Raj? CJ?”

Angie flinched in his arms. “I’m alive,” she said – whispered. If he hadn’t been holding her, he might not have heard her.

“Speak up, Ang, you’re quiet as a churchmouse,” Chuck teased, and shifted her around until he could touch her face. There were tear tracks on her cheeks – he gave her the courtesy of ignoring them.

“Sorry.” That came out a little stronger, but not by much. “Angie sounding off.”

“Forrester sounding off.”

If the odd tone of CJ’s voice hadn’t caught Chuck’s attention – his use of his hated surname would have. “You uninjured, agent?” Chuck asked. He deliberately kept it formal, not sure what state of mind the younger man was in.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, alright then.” Chuck levered himself up off the floor to look around. “Raj? Sam?” Neither of them answered, and there were two still forms on the floor – closer to the center of the room than he was. “Rajit. Samantha. Answer me.” Neither did, and he wasn’t surprised.

Al turned Sam over with a surprisingly gentle touch, and placed his fingers against her jugular. “Pulse is strong – she’s just knocked out.” He reached for Raj, and found CJ’s hands duplicating his move on their medic. The blond didn’t speak, but nodded sharply when Al asked if Raj was in the same condition. “We were closer to the blast, why are they out?” Al asked, looking at Sam’s still face. “No injuries – no blood. Although there is some… discoloration of some sort on her face.”

Chuck scrubbed his hands over his face, feeling the grit of dust and grime. “Who the fuck knows. Maybe there was some other delightful present left behind by whoever booby trapped that binder. And who the fuck puts a trip wire on a binder?”

“Someone who knows scientists,” Lance announced. “Only better bait would have been a giant red ‘don’t touch me!’ button.” He ran a hand over his face too. “What do you want to bet they got a face full of whatever it is that Raj was tracking here? This mystery drug he found in Misty’s tox screen?”

“It seems a safe assumption,” Al agreed, leaning over to check on Raj’s condition. CJ had retreated from the physical contact – unsurprisingly – but Al had positioned himself between the two unconscious agents, alternating his attentions on them. “Did anyone actually read his report on the substance? I confess, I merely skimmed the introduction.”

The silence from his teammates was answer enough.

“I read it,” CJ said finally. His voice was muffled – he’d tucked his knees against his chest and his cheek was pressed against one knee. “I always read all the reports.”

That didn’t surprise Lance – although the sharpshooter’s tone concerned him. “You remember anything about how long it lasts? Side effects? Potential complications?”

CJ considered that, trying to fight through his emotional state to access the data. Ruthlessly he stomped on his rising distress – there was no sense making their situation worse with his own issues. “Posited extended effects based on subject’s response, if subject was only exposed once. Extended effects unlikely; observed effects of similar compounds suggest eight to twelve hours from single dosage.” He paused for breath – he’d delivered an exact recitation of the paragraph from Raj’s report. “Potential complications include depression of respiratory system, similar to benzodiazepines.”

“Makes sense. Maria’s description of Misty’s behavior does kinda sound like benzos,” Chuck mused. “Al, you cool with keeping an eye on their vitals for now?”

“Yes.” The unhurried reply didn’t surprise Chuck, given the attentive way Al had handled the tasks so far. “Although I’m not certain what I’ll do if they drop,” Al added dryly.

Chuck waved a hand. “We’ll burn that bridge if we get to it.” He stared at the pile of debris that had been the wall, door, and corridor they’d entered through. “Okay. Ideas?”

Angie had burrowed back against him, seeking the warmth of his body. He’d forgotten how cold she got – not enough meat on her bones, as his mama would say. “This is normally where I wait for Buffy or AC to tell me what to do,” Angie admitted in a quiet voice. “Or you, Lancelot – I don’t… this isn’t…”

“There is no shame in that,” Al answered – to Chuck and Lance’s mutual surprise. “I, too, tend to wait for orders. We cannot all be chiefs, little mouse,” he murmured. Her eyes flashed to him in surprise. “That is what Chuck called you, yes? A little churchmouse?”

“I did indeed,” Chuck agreed, and put his arm around Angie’s thin shoulders. “She ain’t the only quiet one, though. You okay over there, CJ?”

Unable to avoid a direct question, he had no choice. “No.” He kept his face pressed against his knee, not willing to make eye contact with his superior officer – not wanting to see disappointment. “Trapped.” He was fighting the panic with everything he had, but he was losing… and the people he normally counted on to keep him afloat were not here. Chief… Misty… Clint… any of them, he could trust himself to latch onto, to keep from losing himself to the fear, but… 

“Faireoir. Eyes on me,” Chuck said firmly – not loudly or with anger, but using a command voice that caused his conscious teammates to straighten where they sat, even the distressed sharpshooter. “You are not in that place.” He wasn’t sure where that place was – but he’d seen a pretty damned similar reaction from a former POW, and he was rolling with the same play that had saved his unit’s bacon then. “You are here with your team, and we are going to get out of here.” There was no doubt in this pronouncement – no room for doubt. “I need your eyes, faireoir – you’re our watcher. I need your observation skills, so focus for me.” Then Chuck’s lips twitched. “Tell me, what do your elf eyes see?”

CJ’s eyes met Chuck’s, and his lip twitched in response. It was such a Chief line – hell, it was a Clint line, too. Either of them would have pulled a Lord of the Rings reference out to calm him. In a weird way, just having them brought front-of-mind helped. CJ managed to take a deep breath, his eyes locked on Chuck’s, and he unlocked his arms from around his knees. “I see a big pile of crap where the door used to be, Chuckles – and I want to look at it harder before we start moving shit around, and bring the whole thing down on us.”

Chuck nodded once – sharp, decisive, but not dismissive – and turned his attention to Angie. “Before the big bada boom, did you notice if there were any computers in here? Telephones?”

His second movie reference in as many sentences made Angie want to laugh – but there was hysteria still at the edges of the humor, so she swallowed it down. “I didn’t see anything, but it happened so fast…”

“Seriously, I’m going to kick Raj’s ass,” Lance grumbled.

“You’ll have to wait in line.” Chuck’s tone was just as firm with Lance as it had been with CJ – and their team second tended to defer more to Lance, particularly this last week. He’d leaned on their tactical specialist in Misty’s absence – too much, he thought. Lance had shouldered the burden of the assault investigation – Chuck should not have allowed him to take on any of the squad’s responsibility as well. “And before you glare at me, you’re behind me in line… but I’m behind Phil, Nat, Clint, Maria, and Misty – all of whom are gonna have some shit to say to him.”

“And us,” CJ added. “Jesus, how could we be so stupid. I knew we should have told Chief where we were going.” He cut himself off, shaking his head. “Did anybody leave word? With anybody?”

Chuck was really beginning to hate the sound of silence.

“Nobody will miss me until I’m supposed to report to work tomorrow,” Angie said, voice still soft. It had lost some of the brittle tone, but she’d yet to put any distance between herself and Chuck. “But I’m supposed to report to intel, so… somebody will notice, I guess.”

“At what time?”

“Nine.”

With a sigh, Chuck rubbed his forehead again. “Right. Twelvish hours before somebody notices anything amiss – unless we manage to get a message out.” He pulled his cell phones – he had a SHIELD phone and a personal, private cell – out of his pocket and laid them on the dirty concrete. “Anybody got signal?”

There was a flurry of hands in pockets, and several more inert devices were added to the floor. Al checked both Raj and Sam’s pockets, retrieving three more electronic devices… none of which would power on.

“My watch is dead,” Lance remarked, looking down at his wrist. “Must have been a localized EMP in that blast… Jesus, I hate it when the bad guys get clever.”

“Lucky mine is an old one,” Chuck said, tapping his wristwatch with his fingertip. “Old self-winding one that my mama’s brother wore in Vietnam. This sucker would survive a nuclear blast.” He tapped it again, a smile forming. “It’s also damned lucky – I mean, my uncle may have come home with a Purple Heart, but he did come home. Just like we’re gonna.” Then he flinched – dramatically, with a hand raised to his heart to emphasize his comedic point. “Although I ain’t sure I’m gonna survive the tongue lashing I’m gonna get from my mama when she finds out I got myself blown up again. ‘I thought you left the Corp so’s not to get blowed up!’ she’ll shout, and I’ll cower, ‘cause she’s right…” He grinned as his teammates laughed at him. Laughter was good. Laughter was how he’d get them moving, get them out of here. “Can you do anything with these things, Ang? Dig out your inner Tony Stark, and build us a get-out-of-Hell-free card?”

Angie looked down at the electronics… a heap of useless, probably fried circuit boards. “There’s not enough tech intact to make a Tamagotchi.”

Chuck elbowed her. “Give it a whirl, genius girl.” When she glared at him, he flashed her a sincere smile. “Hey, I’m used to you being able to whip up a gadget solution to every problem, Ang. Can’t blame a guy for hoping.”

She dug in a pants pocket for the case of microtools that never left her person. “You do realize I’m not Stark?”

“Oh, yeah,” Chuck agreed, and grinned. “You’ve got a better figure.” He watched her settle into a crouch by the electronics, her attention focused now on a task – much as CJ’s was, on his observations of the structural damage to their temporary abode. Chuck flicked his eyes to Lance, then to CJ. He didn’t dare make a hand signal, but his message was clear: watch him, please. The slight tilt of Lance’s head towards CJ was answer enough.

The squad second turned his attention to his two unconscious teammates, and their minder. “You still doing okay over there, Alley Cat?”

Al flinched. “Perfectly.”

“Uh huh.” Chuck crossed his arms over his chest. “I call bullshit. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Al attempted to brush off Chuck’s question, but there were only so many places to look in their confines, and the concerned and curious gazes of his teammates were impossible to avoid forever. “Must you call me that? I thought… I thought we had gotten past this, me being the feral feline.”

Lance and Chuck stared at him. It was a moment before either of them could speak, and then it was not to Al, but to each other. “Did you – does he think – ” Lance began, waving a distressed hand at Al.

“How the fuck did no one tell him?” Chuck burst out. “Damn it all to Hell. Misty’s going to string me up by my toenails and shave me bald.” That particular grumble made Lance guffaw. “And I ain’t talking about my head, neither.” He rubbed his chin. “Not like a stray cat, Al. Like the Aristocats.”

“What does aristocracy have to do with this?”

“Not – not aristocracy,” Chuck corrected. “The Disney movie, the Aristocats. It’s from like, what, the fifties?”

“Nineteen seventy, you heathen,” Lance corrected, scowling at Chuck.

“Right.” He accepted the correction with a small smile – and he’d never admit to Lance that he’d given the wrong date on purpose. “Animated movie, you know? Main male lead’s voiced by the same guy who did Baloo in The Jungle Book, plays this cat called – well.” Chuck grinned, a little embarrassed, and to the shock of his squadmates, began to sing. “I’ve got that wanderlust… gotta walk the scene. Gotta kick up highway dust, feel the grass that’s green… gotta strut them city streets, showin’ off my eclat, yeah… Tellin’ my friends of the social elite or some cute cat I happen to meet that I’m… Abraham de Lacy Guiseppe Casey Thomas O’Malley – O’Malley the Alley Cat.” He had a surprisingly pleasant voice, and while he was no Phil Harris, it wasn’t a bad rendition. “And I’ve very proud of that, yeah,” Chuck added in a final flourish, tipping an imaginary hat in Al’s direction. The linguist was staring at him, his face completely slack. In his own voice, Chuck explained, “You know, he’s got half of Europe represented in his name, and he’s kind of a nomad…”

“And cute,” Angie added, looking up from a disassembled cell phone. “Lands the female lead, that hot Duchess cat, and winds up being a pampered high society cat.”

“You… nicknamed me out of a Disney movie?” Al repeated – needing that clarity. Needing to understand that his call name wasn’t a constant insult. They weren’t calling him an alley cat, a stray, a runaway. A throwaway.

They’d named him out of a piece of their childhoods… and thought he knew.

“Yeah,” Chuck confirmed, looking closely at Al for a hint of his reaction. Christ, Misty would do worse than shave his balls if he’d fractured the squad further with this little revelation.

That fear melted in the light of the first genuine, uninhibited smile they’d ever seen from him spread on Al’s face. He didn’t speak – wasn’t sure he could. Al just nodded once at Chuck, and returned his attention to his task of monitoring Sam and Raj… but the smile remained.

CJ’s head had tilted to one side when Chuck began to sing, and his posture had softened with every bar of music. By the time he’d returned to normal voice, CJ found he was sitting against the wall as ordinarily as if he’d slunk there after a beer… not the beginnings of full bore panic attack. Maybe his therapist had been right about music helping, he thought – and he just hadn’t found the right stuff. “Do you… know anything other songs from that movie?” he asked, feeling young and stupid to be asking, but unable to resist the lure of the strongest anti-anxiety technique he’d ever felt.

“Sure do.” Chuck grinned at him, pointed at Lance and then at Angie, and broke into ‘Everybody Wants To Be A Cat.’ He watched – and was damned careful not to look like he was watching – as their youngest (and, Chuck thought, probably most damaged) squad member uncoiled himself and eased closer – eventually picking up one of Angie’s spare screwdrivers, and helping her check their defunct phones for signs of digital life. Once the sharpshooter’s eyes were occupied, Chuck raised an eyebrow at Lance. Their tactical specialist accepted the baton with no further prompting.

“If you’ve got a good gauge on the rubble, CJ – I’m going to start shifting some of it. Can you keep watch while Chuck and I work? And… I think we’ll whistle while we work?” He whistled a little of the tune from Snow White, and was answered by a blazing grin from Chuck and a happy nod from CJ.

Maybe, Lance thought as they began to move debris – maybe they’d get out of this with all their wits intact after all.

~ * ~

Maria pulled her borrowed SUV up behind Chuck’s SHIELD SUV and parked. Both she and Misty reflexively checked holster and credentials before exiting the vehicles – and though they were still wearing jeans and sneakers, they moved with the seriousness and stealth of uniform-clad SHIELD agents.

That is, until Maria flashed Misty a ‘wait’ signal, and pointed to her ear. “Don’t you dare take off after some noise tonight like you did with Daisy,” Misty hissed. Her voice was barely above a whisper, but Maria could hear sincerity and fear in it.

“I know.” She didn’t want to risk speaking, but she couldn’t let her bunny’s fear go unanswered. Maria gestured towards the source of the sound, and they crept closer to the edge of an abandoned building, tracing along its outer foundation until they reached a small fissure.

Even Misty could make out the noise at this point.

Of course, it was difficult to mistake. How often do you hear ‘Heigh Ho! Heigh Ho! It’s home from work we go!’ sung by adult voices in the middle of an abandoned, condemned lot?

Maria waited – with admirable patience, Misty thought – until the end of the song before she let out a piercing whistle. After a sharp initial note, she trilled a series of beats that Phil had taught all his agents – his signal for ‘Report.’

Inside the ruined lab, Chuck’s head came up like he’d been jerked by a puppeteer, and his eyes shot up to the ceiling like he could see through it. He whistled the correct response automatically, but didn’t have the strength to continue in code. “Chief? Is that you? Come to dig us out of here?”

Misty’s knees had gone weak with relief at the first answering note, and now she sagged against the edge of the building as she answer. “It’s Buffy and Ria, Chuckles. Sensei called us in.”

“Misty?” CJ’s voice cracked on her name, and Misty wanted to reach through whatever space there was between them and hug him until the crack healed.

“Yeah, it’s me, faireoir,” Misty repeated. She pressed her forehead against the building and flashed a hand sign to Maria. Let the senior agent investigate, locate a way in – there was no way she was walking away from this spot, not when she could hear the need in her men’s voices. “Is everybody okay down there?”

“Sam and Raj are going to need medical,” Lance reported. “We think they got dosed with whatever the lab was cooking up… and Raj found this place looking for what you were dosed with, so…”

“Yeah.” Misty understood – unknown substance, unknown exposure. They wouldn’t be able to avoid SHIELD medical, not like she had. “Any signs of coming out of it yet? Angie, Al, you guys okay?”

Angie’s voice was stronger than Misty had expected – she’d kind of figured their tech analyst would wilt in this kind of situation, but was happy to be wrong. “We’re good, Buff. I’m fucking starving, though. We stopped here on our way to dinner twelve hours ago.” 

There was a dramatic yelp from Chuck. “Hey! I’m not the one that wanted to stop here!”

“No, you are the idiot that volunteered the rest of us to go with Raj,” Al added, his voice dry. “And yes, Buffy – to answer your question, they are showing some signs of returning consciousness. Raj’s pulse has picked up, and he sounds like one rousing from sleep – but not yet to awareness.”

“Wait, Misty – have Maria go right back to where she was, and tap that again,” CJ ordered – interrupting everyone without apology. Misty used her cell phone to relay the message. “Yes! She’s close, must be right above us… see that strut vibrate?”

In the end, it took Misty and Maria another hour to expose the ductwork that ventilated the laboratory – time enough for them to join in a round of ‘It’s A Small World After All’ (which Maria grumbled about, while smiling) and ‘Be Prepared’ – and for a sleepy Sam and drowsy Raj to add their voices to ‘He’s A Tramp’ and ‘Be Our Guest.’

By the time Angie was announcing that Mrs. Potts had the napkins freshly pressed, Misty had her arms wrapped around CJ and Chuck, laughing through tears as eight Scoobies – and Maria – all tried to hug at once.

~ * ~


End file.
